This year alone [2014], immigration authorities expect more than 70,000 unaccompanied minors to come through the United States unlawfully, the majority of whom are from Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The number of unaccompanied Central American girls caught at the Southwest border has rapidly outpaced the number boys, according to a July Pew Research study.

Rape can be perpetrated by anyone along the way, including guides, fellow migrants, bandits or government officials, according to Fusion. Sometimes sex is used as a form of payment, when women and girls don’t have money to pay bribes.

The assaults are so common that many women and girls take contraceptives beforehand as preventative measures.

What’s particularly disconcerting is that the fact that these figures may not even represent the full grim picture.

There is one unit in Mexico that is committed to investigating and prosecuting crimes against migrants, Erin Siegal McIntyre, one of the Fusion reporters who wrote the sexual violence story, told HuffPost Live.

“The very authorities who should be handling such complaints are also in most cases the ones that are tasked with rounding up migrants and deporting them back to their native country,” McIntyre said. “It’s very hard to get people to open up about stuff like this.””